33 002 BODYWORK REBUILD BEGINS!

July 05-The long and arduous task of sorting out 33002's cabs has started. The main body is not to bad but the cabs are a real mess after years of being bodged up with fibreglass by BR. The Sunday gang have been grinding out tons of rust and muck and Dave The Welder is doing wonders, more or less fabricating new cab front and sides.

The South Devon Railway held a GRAND DIESEL GALA on Saturday 11th And Sunday 12th June 2005. The Pictures and details can be found here:

W55000

22/4/05, W55000, the line's bubble car is owned by one of our members and is under long term restoration. It had a major step forward this week as it's newly turned wheels were fitted.

SDDT are proud to announce another addition to the fleet: 33002 (D6501) "Sea King" has arrived at Buckfastleigh. She arrived from Cumbria on the 25th January. We have done a bit of weatherproofing temporarily and restoration will start in earnest when we've finnished 25 901's engine.

33 002 SEA KING

SDDT are proud to announce another addition to the fleet: 33002 (D6501) "Sea King" has been purchased by us from the Harry Needle Railroad Co and Joined us at Buckfastleigh. She has been out of service for more than 5 years and consequently needs quite a lot of bodywork restoration. The main components appear to be very good though, so hopefully she won't be too hard to restore but will certainly keep us out of mischief for a while!

D6501 was built in 1959 by the Birmingham Railway Carriage & Wagon co. and entered traffic in Feb 1960 at Hithergreen. She became 33 002 in Feb 1974

She has a Sulzer 8LDA28 Engine, straight eight cylindered and turbo charged, producing 1550 Bhp. She weighs 73½tons, with a full tank of fuel (72 with half a tank) meaning she has a very high power to weight ratio for her time. She was built with air and vacuum brakes, electric train heat and drivers controls at all four corners, to assist with shunting. She was therefore very "state of the art" for 1959/60.

She spent most of her working life based at Hither Green and Eastleigh, ending up in the engineers pool at Selhurst, hence the "dutch" livery. She ended up owned by "DRS" in Cumbria, but to my knowledge they never used her, being stored at Smalmstown army depot outside Carlisle.

She will be useful to the South Devon Railway as she is light, powerful and very easy to shunt with. 33s or "cromptons" as they were known, (due to their crompton parkinson electrical gear) were used on everything on the Southern from express Waterloo to Exeter services to pick up goods trains and "dragging" electric traims in times of power failure. Locally they were used on the loco hauled Exeter to Paignton and Exeter to Barnstaple services in the late 70s and early 80s.